Southern Innovation, a developer and manufacturer of state-of-the-art real-time materials analysis equipment for the global mining industry, says it has taken a strategic step forward in sales and marketing with the appointment of Steve Russell as Head of Sales and Business Development.
Russell, currently Director of Mining at Scott Automation & Robotics, joins the Southern Innovation team in mid-January 2022 in a role that is expected to drive growth in the company’s key areas of rig-mounted exploration scanners and conveyor-mounted ore sensing/scanning, especially in bulk ores, and looking to near-term applications in base and precious metals.
An engineering professional with a strong background in mining as well as sales and marketing, Russell has previously driven several step-change innovation and automation strategies in the mining industry, according to Southern Innovation.
Southern Innovation, Managing Director David Scoullar, said this appointment will drive strategic growth that has been in the planning stage for a considerable time.
“Southern Innovation has a solid and conservative business base, built off a unique foundation of robust, patient and home-grown development of much-sought-after signal processing technology,” he said. “We have worked closely with some of the most respected and sizeable international mining companies in R&D, and we are now confidently transitioning to grow product sales.
“Our clear objective is to help our customers to improve productivity as well as reduce waste in minerals identification, extraction and processing as the industry drives to net zero emissions by 2050.”
Southern Innovation’s key proprietary products are known as DrillScan™ and GradeScan™.
DrillScan (pictured above, working in the Pilbara of Western Australia) was developed in close collaboration with BHP and is an X-ray Transmission scanner that bolts onto the drill chain of RC drill rigs, performing accurate and continuous analysis while drilling. Results from field use demonstrate more than 95% correlation between continuous, real-time analysis and post-drilling XRF lab-based grade analysis of contemporaneous samples, according to the company.
GradeScan™, meanwhile, is an online, real-time conveyor-mounted X-ray scanner capable of characterising sampled bulk ore in real time at 1 mm resolution across multiple dimensions, according to the company. It features full spectrum scanning, enabled by Southern Innovation’s patented digital signal processing technology, SITORO® Accelerated Analysis.